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NEW YORK, July 27, 2012
–
Global Finance
has announced the First Round winners in the "World's Best Internet Banks" competition in Central & Eastern Europe. This is the 13th year
Global Finance
has named the World's Best Internet Banks. Details on all First Round winners will be published in the September issue. First Round winners include Best Corporate/Institutional Internet Banks and Best Consumer Internet Banks at the country level. Winners were also selected in Asia, North America, Latin America, Europe and Middle East/Africa. The Regional and Global winners for these categories will be announced at an Awards Ceremony in New York City in November and published in the December issue of
Global Finance
. Also announced were Regional winners in Sub-Categories. Global winners in the Sub-Categories will also be announced at the Awards Ceremony and in the December issue. The list of First Round winners follows.

Winners were chosen among entries evaluated by a world-class panel of judges at Infosys.
Global Finance
editors were responsible for the final selection of winners in the First Round.

Only banks that entered the competition were considered for awards, and awards were only given in those regions, countries and categories in which there were entries.

Winning banks were selected based on the following criteria: strength of strategy for attracting and servicing online customers, success in getting clients to use web offerings, growth of online customers, breadth of product offerings, evidence of tangible benefits gained from Internet initiatives, and web site design and functionality. Category winners, such as "best in social media" were selected based on the relative strength and success of those web products and services.

"The Internet has transformed the way many consumers and most businesses bank," says Joseph D. Giarraputo, publisher of
Global Finance
. "The continuing improvements in Internet offerings represented by this year's entries show that more significant Internet banking developments are still ahead of us."